JET ENGINE

A jet engine is a reaction engine that discharges a fast moving jet of fluid to generate thrust in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. This broad definition of jet engines includes turbojets, turbofans, rockets, ramjets, pulse jets and pump-jets. In general, most jet engines are internal combustion engines but non-combusting forms also exist.
In some common parlance, the term 'jet engine' loosely refers to an internal combustion duct engine. These typically consist of an engine with a rotary (rotating) air compressor powered by a turbine ("Brayton cycle"), with the leftover power providing thrust via a propelling nozzle. These types of jet engines are primarily used by jet aircraft for long distance travel. Early jet aircraft used turbojet engines which were relatively inefficient for subsonic flight. Modern subsonic jet aircraft usually use high-bypass turbofan engines which give high speeds, as well as (over long distances) better fuel efficiency than many other forms of transport.

Uses
Jet engines are usually used as aircraft engines for jet aircraft. They are also used for cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles.
In the form of rocket engines they are used for fireworks, model rocketry, spaceflight, and military missiles.
Jet engines have also been used to propel high speed cars, particularly drag racers, with the all-time record held by a rocket car. A turbofan powered car ThrustSSC currently holds the land speed record.
Jet engine designs are frequently modified to turn them into gas turbine engines which are used in a wide variety of industrial applications. These include electrical power generation, powering water, natural gas, or oil pumps, and providing propulsion for ships and locomotives. Industrial gas turbine can create up to 50,000 shaft horsepower. Many of these engines are derived from older military turbojets such as the Pratt & Whitney J57 and J75 models. There is also a derivative of the P&W JT8D low-bypass turbofan that creates up to 35,000 HP.


General physical principles
All jet engines are reaction engines that generate thrust by emitting a jet of fluid rearwards at relatively high speed. The forces on the inside of the engine needed to create this jet give a strong thrust on the engine which pushes the craft forwards.
Jet engines make their jet from propellant from tankage that is attached to the engine (as in a 'rocket') as well as in duct engines (those commonly used on aircraft) by ingesting an external fluid (very typically air) and expelling it at higher speed.
Thrust
The motion impulse of the engine is equal to the fluid mass multiplied by the speed at which the engine emits this mass:
I = mc
where m is the fluid mass per second and c is the exhaust speed. In other words, a vehicle gets the same thrust if it outputs a lot of exhaust very slowly, or a little exhaust very quickly. (In practice parts of the exhaust may be faster than others, but it is the average momentum that matters, and thus the important quantity is called the effective exhaust speed - c here.)
However, when a vehicle moves with certain velocity v, the fluid moves towards it, creating an opposing ram drag at the intake:
mv
Most types of jet engine have an intake, which provides the bulk of the fluid exiting the exhaust. Conventional rocket motors, however, do not have an intake, the oxidizer and fuel both being carried within the vehicle. Therefore, rocket motors do not have ram drag; the gross thrust of the nozzle is the net thrust of the engine. Consequently, the thrust characteristics of a rocket motor are different from that of an air breathing jet engine, and thrust is independent of speed.
The jet engine with an intake duct is only useful if the velocity of the gas from the engine, c, is greater than the vehicle velocity, v, as the net engine thrust is the same as if the gas were emitted with the velocity c − v. So the thrust is actually equal to
S = m(c − v)
This equation shows that as v approaches c, a greater mass of fluid must go through the engine to continue to accelerate at the same rate, but all engines have a designed limit on this. Additionally, the equation implies that the vehicle can't accelerate past its exhaust velocity as it would have negative thrust.
Energy efficiency


Dependence of the energy efficiency (η) upon the vehicle speed/exhaust speed ratio (v/c) for air-breathing jet and rocket engines
Energy efficiency (η) of jet engines installed in vehicles has two main components, cycle efficiency (ηc)- how efficiently the engine can accelerate the jet, and propulsive efficiency (ηp)-how much of the energy of the jet ends up in the vehicle body rather than being carried away as kinetic energy of the jet.
Even though overall energy efficiency η is simply:
η = ηpηc
For all jet engines the propulsive efficiency is highest when the engine emits an exhaust jet at a speed that is the same as, or nearly the same as, the vehicle velocity as this gives the smallest residual kinetic energy.
In addition to propulsive efficiency, another factor is cycle efficiency; essentially a jet engine is typically a form of heat engine. Heat engine efficiency is determined by the ratio of temperatures that are reached in the engine to that they are exhausted at from the nozzle, which in turn is limited by the overall pressure ratio that can be achieved. Cycle efficiency is highest in rocket engines (~60+%), as they can achieve extremely high combustion temperatures and can have very large, energy efficient nozzles. Cycle efficiency in turbojet and similar is nearer to 30%, the practical combustion temperatures and nozzle efficiencies are much lower.